Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The "Seven Wonders" Parlor Game

With six of the original Seven Wonders of the World no loner standing, a group called New7Wonders is sponsoring a poll to pick seven new wonders of the world. They've narrowed things down to a list of 21:

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Alhambra, Granada, Spain

Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia

Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico

Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Colosseum, Rome

Easter Island Statues, Chile

Eiffel Tower, Paris

Great Wall, China

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey

Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan

Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow

Machu Picchu, Peru

Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany

Petra ancient city, Jordan

Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Statue of Liberty, New York

Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom

Sydney Opera House, Australia

Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Timbuktu city, Mali

The only one of those sites that I've visited is the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. It's quite nice, but I'd pick the Todaiji Temple in Nara with its giant Buddha over the Kiyomizu. The rest all sound like fascinating places, but personally if I had to pick seven from the list, I'd definitely go with the Pyramids at Giza and the Great Wall of China, and then for the next five, probably Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Easter Island, the Eiffel Tower, and Machu Picchu. Maybe the Taj Mahal over one of the other sites.

What do some of the rest of you who may have seen more of these in person think? What would you add to the list? Wikipedia has some otherwonder lists people have compiled.

One good source for ideas is the much larger list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites; I've visited three in Japan, one in Mexico, and nine in the United States (including Puerto Rico). A couple of those weren't really "full" visits, just brief drive-throughs and such.